Six weeks after the gruesome murder of Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi dissident and U.S. resident, the White House appears as committed as ever to absolving Mohammed bin Salman, the Saudi crown prince widely believed to have ordered Khashoggi’s death, and finding a way to resume its ordinarily chummy relationship with Riyadh. Balancing competing imperatives to redress the killing of a prominent journalist without imperiling a desired alliance, on Thursday the Treasury Department announced sanctions targeting more than a dozen Saudis allegedly involved in the plot against Khashoggi. (Saudi prosecutors claim Khashoggi was accidentally killed during a rogue extradition attempt in Istanbul. The crown prince, the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, has denied any knowledge of the operation.)

Among longtime Saudi observers, however, approval for the sanctions was tempered by a sense that it was all just an attempt to save face. “The Trump administration deserves some limited credit for imposing sanctions on the 17 named individuals,” Rob Berschinski, the senior vice president for policy at Human Rights First, told me. “In isolation, today’s action is the minimum that we should expect in response to such an egregious killing. There should be no doubt that there are sighs of relief in Riyadh at the moment, and no one should describe today’s actions as a win for accountability or human rights.”

Indeed, the sanctions list appears to reflect a mutual understanding between Washington and Riyadh. Among those targeted are at least three high-profile officials—Saud al-Qahtani, a former top aide to Mohammed bin Salman; the Saudi consul general in Istanbul, Mohammed al-Otaibi; and Maher Mutreb, who the Treasury accused of having “coordinated and executed” the operation. But the notable absence of Ahmed al-Assiri, the deputy former head of the kingdom’s intelligence services and close confidant of Mohammed bin Salman, a reported architect of the murder plot, softened the message. “While this may seem an important step, it is still below what the Trump [administration] can and should do here,” said Ali Al-Ahmed, a Saudi dissident and the founder and director of the Institute for Gulf Affairs. (Friday night, The Washington Post reported that the C.I.A. has concluded Mohammed bin Salman, not one of his deputies, was responsible for Khashoggi’s death, but Trump remains skeptical.)

Within the State Department, there was already pervasive skepticism that Donald Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo would take substantive action against Saudi Arabia and M.B.S., who is a key ally of the president’s son-in-law and top adviser, Jared Kushner. The president, after all, has repeatedly declared that the U.S.-Saudi relationship—and specifically, a multi-billion-dollar arms deal—shouldn’t become collateral in the Khashoggi affair. As I previously reported, Pompeo’s initial “grip and grin” meeting with M.B.S., and subsequent promises to “get to the bottom” of what happened, prompted disgust across Foggy Bottom. Diplomats fumed when Riyadh changed its story, again and again. Why should the United States continue to support Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen, where an estimated eight million people are on the brink of starvation, if the kingdom could not respect its American patrons? According to one former State Department official still in touch with his former colleagues, there is lingering dissent over Pompeo’s decision to certify that Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are doing enough to limit civilian casualties in Yemen. “The decision was lambasted because it was so absurd on its face,” this person said.

The White House’s credibility on human rights was further thrust into question Thursday after it was reported that administration officials had considered an outrageous plot to muffle criticism by Saudi Arabia’s regional rival, Turkey, which has been strategically leaking evidence from Khashoggi’s murder in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. According to NBC News, Trump officials had discussed extraditing Turkish cleric Fethullah Gülen, an enemy of President Recep Erdoğan who has been living in exile in Pennsylvania, with the hope that the peace offering would get the Turks to back off the Saudis. “At first there were eye rolls, but once they realized it was a serious request, the career guys were furious,” a senior U.S. official involved in the process told NBC News. (A National Security Council spokesperson denied any knowledge of the alleged plot.)

The possibility that the Trump administration had considered trading the life of one dissident to help cover up the murder of another, if true, should put an end to hopes that the White House will take meaningful action on Saudi Arabia. The prospect of a serious congressional response, too, seems increasingly unlikely. Defense Secretary James Mattis has already moved to appease Capitol Hill by confirming that the military will stop refueling Saudi aircraft fighting in Yemen—a largely symbolic gesture. Several lawmakers are still demanding that the U.S. withdraw its support for the war, but don’t yet have the votes. On Wednesday, the first day of the lame-duck Congress, Republicans in the House sidelined a bill that would have forced a vote on the U.S. involvement in the Saudi-led war in Yemen, meaning it won’t see the floor.

“What they did is totally without precedent, it is an absolute undermining of the intention of the law—what Congress intended when it wrote this law in the first place—and is just brazenly stifling debate on this issue and preventing a floor vote on it. . . . It is pretty remarkable,” fumed one Democratic congressional aide. The move by Republicans—which prevented their caucus from taking what would have been an undeniably difficult vote—all but guaranteed that the issue of U.S. involvement in the civil war will be put on the back burner until the new session of Congress in January, when House Democrats assume the majority. At which point, the aide added, “In terms of debating this issue, there are a lot more tools at our disposal.”

There are positive signs that the U.S.-Saudi relationship, though unbroken, has at least been reconfigured. There are other silver linings, too. While Washington’s handling of the Khashoggi saga has left diplomats disillusioned, Trump’s decision last week to finally appoint a U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia was considered a welcome development. Diplomats and foreign-policy experts I spoke with hailed Trump’s pick, John Abizaid, as an excellent choice during a fraught time. Abizaid, a retired four-star general, was previously named as the head of U.S. Central Command shortly after the U.S. invaded Baghdad, and speaks fluent Arabic. “This is one of the best appointments Trump has made,” Tom Lippman, who served as the Middle East bureau chief for the Post, told me. “I know that is not saying much but on paper it was an excellent appointment.”

One former high-ranking State Department official who worked in the Middle East and knows Abizaid, echoed Lippman. “For him to go to Saudi Arabia now I think is amazingly good. I am stunned that they came up with somebody who is so good,” they told me, emphasizing his understanding of the players in the region and the role of U.S. ambassador. Indeed, the biggest challenge for Abizaid, the former official said, won’t be “dealing with the Saudis” but “dealing with the White House.” Specifically, working with, or around, Kushner, who notably backed the Saudi-Emirati blockade of Qatar. As the former head of CentCom, which has its forward headquarters in Doha, Abizaid may have strong feelings about the White House’s controversial role in that ongoing Gulf conflict.

If Abizaid and Kushner clash, it wouldn’t be the first time the president’s son-in-law picked a fight with another senior official. Kushner’s close relationship with M.B.S. dates back to the earliest days of the Trump administration, when he reportedly identified the Saudi crown prince as a “change agent” and anointed him a critical figure in the Trump administration’s Middle East foreign policy. As Kushner and M.B.S. grew closer, former Secretary of State Rex Tillersonwas forced to the sidelines.

Kushner’s close relationship with the crown prince ultimately may have created more problems than it solved for the administration. But Trump, it seems, is determined to press on with an alliance that he has deemed crucial to U.S. foreign policy with Israel and Iran. The bigger question, as the White House tries to clear the air and move on, is whether Kushner will resume his role as diplomatic freelancer in the Middle East. “If M.B.S. continues to sort of play games and do things behind everybody’s back with Jared Kushner, that is not going to work for Abizaid,” the former State official told me. “If he is smart, he is going to lay down that law and say, ‘If I go out, this is what it means to me to be an American ambassador, I am the channel, period.’” Of course, in an administration where Kushner and his wife, Ivanka Trump, appear to be the only two officials truly immune to staff turnover, most power struggles tend to resolve in Kushner’s favor. Nevertheless, Abizaid “knows perfectly well what an American ambassador is supposed to be able to do,” the ex-official said. “An American ambassador is the representative of the president, Jared Kushner is not.”